Autor: Lars Holstein

Hey, I think I should name all my titles like this. It’s so incredible creative… No.

My Brother asked me, if I had no bank holiday yesterday. No, I hadn’t. Why? Well, there is a day which is equivalent to the first of May in Germany. This day is the first Monday in May. The first of may has nearly international historical reasons, but the UK and Ireland thought, that it would be a bad idea to have a bank holiday in the middle of the week.

The economy is served better with a non-work Monday after a weekend, than with a non-work day in the middle of the week. So I think, this is really smart.

I was asked how it works with the understanding. Yes, I really have to say: Bad. Really bad. Usually you should be able to speak or understand English in a few weaks. But this is not going to happen. I had ever problems with the understanding of English and it’s much more worse with the irish dialect.

I have to ask everytime at least once, if they could be so kind to repeat what they asked.

Though their dialect is quite useful. For example: They do not pronounce a “s” when they say “th”. Usually they say “I tink so” or “Tanks” instead of “I think so” or “Thanks”. I never liked the “s” anyway so I am using this part of their dialect too.

That’s it for today.

Hi,

as you may see, I named the title like the day we have today. Why? Because I don´t know what to tell you.

I think, I will tell you something about my last few days at work.

I have to say, I really like my work. The people are friendly, funny and patient. I help where I can and fix several smaller problems with our Anti-Virus Sophos, a program called nGenera and things like this.

I was asked if I could start tomorrow at 6:30, so we can switch our firewall. Why they asked me? I don´t want to show off this much, but at the moment I am the person there with the most experience in networking-things. I think, I should get paid better. 😉

So… I think, this was my entry for today. We read us.

Hello Everyone,

I am sorry that you had to wait so long. Especially my mother was really annoyed but I had not that much time in the last few days and the WLAN wasn´t working in the last few minutes. So… Whatever, I am here now.

Why was it a sad day? Well. Today I stand up at 7:30 to be on the airport early enough. You know, you have to be there as early as possible and so on.

Look here, I know, it´s not that good to see, but the starting aircraft is a very special one:

You may ask, why it is special. And this is a good question which leads me to the thing I wanted to tell you.

Her Name is Malena and she had an internship here in Ireland, too. She is from Lüneburg and yeah… We understood us very well. We have very much commonalities and we met the first time on the tour with the celtics things. She is in the IT. In german it is called „Fachinformatiker für Anwendungsentwicklung“. The plane in the picture above is the plane she took back to germany.

We met every day this week and it was just wonderful. In the first days here in Ireland I thought „I want to be back in Germany!“. Then I thought „God damn, this is pretty cool here, I want to live here!“. And now I just want to go back to germany and spent my time with her, with my Girlfriend. Yes, that´s it for today. 🙂

See you

Hello there,

I am sorry. I am tired and I seem to get a cold, so I want to go to bed. I will just upload a few pictures from my trip about the celtic culture and then sleep for a too short time. The big news I wanted to tell you has to wait until the next few days.

Hi,

as I told you the day before yesterday I was on a trip about the old celtic culture in Ireland on saturday.

So my day started at 6 am to stand up early and the joy to realise again the incredible cool public transport here in Dublin. I looked on my official App when the bus is arriving so I could go out and wait just a few seconds for it. My App told me, that the bus arrives in nearly 20 minutes. After 5 minutes I watched out of my window and saw my bus passing by… The next look on my app told me, that I have to wait another 40 minutes. Really. This is the last thing I want to have on a saturday morning.

However, I arrived on time and the tour started.

Our first station was the Hill of Tara with a nearby standing old Church. I didn´t get the whole story about this location, but I understood that it was very bloody. The typical irish history.

After this awesome location we drove to Trim Castle. The biggest Castle in Ireland is now a very tall Ruin with a big Tower inside. Some scenes of the film Braveheart were taken here (god damn, I real need the Camera from my colleague! She made really good photos).

We took the bus to arrive some minutes later at the propably oldest cemetery of mankind and definetly the oldest in Ireland. It is called Lough Crew. Really. I will stop here and hope to give you all the pictures in the next days!

Cu, Lars

Here I am!

It is incredible. It felt like yesterday was Saturday the 6^th and I am waiting for me flight, because the time is just running. My colleagues are still cool, my workplace nice and I like to stand up early in the morning just to go to work. All our Users are very friendly and helpful and if that´s not enough: The Big Bosses are also extreme friendly and helpful. If you ask me: This is a more familiar atmosphere than it could ever be in Germany. We are not laid back enough. This is a nice atmosphere we have here in Ireland.

After 2 very short weeks I am finally able to have no problems to find the way to work without my GPS and it becomes better, I am able to find the way back home walking. 😉

Why should I do this? Just because the Busses are so extremely expensive. So I burn some calories and save some money. That comes in handy!

I am still amazed from the friendliness of all the people here. If you walk against someone or stand in their way, they only say “Oh, Sorry!”. I walk against them and they say sorry! In Germany I would be beaten. 😀

Wednesday I took the Bus and sat next to an older woman. I was listening music when she suddenly began to talk to me. She asked me, where I am from. I said Germany. And then she started to ask me, where she should go, because next week she will go to Berlin. Funny coincidence. And then she told me about a turret clock, I every day pass by. I never realized it, but this clock is called the “Four-Face-Lier”. All of her 4 sides shows an other time. It´s on my list of fotos I want to upload. 🙂

Thursday I was in the St. Patricks Cathedral. A very phenomenal and impressive building! But I have to say, it´s more interesting from the outside than from the inside. However, it was worth the 4,50€ entrance. Here a picture from the cathedral:

I am not sure if we read us tomorrow. I will take a tour with a girl from my workplace. It is a tour about the old celtic culture. We will see some castles and other real cool stuff. It starts at 8am and ends at 5pm. Imagine, I would never think about to stand up on 6am on an Saturday in Germany. I hope (and I am sure :D) it is worth to stand up that early!

See you Guys!

So Guys it´s me again!

I hope you excuse me that I did not tell you so many times about my week. But as you may know, the first week in a completely different and unknown Country is something very special. You have to test so much different things, have to go to so much different locations…

So… Let´s tell me something about my week:

Monday was a very special day. After a meeting with Margaret (our Coordinator for our apprenticeship here in Dublin) we (that means 14 Guys) went to the Guinness-Factory. There we were told about the procedure how to craft Guinness. After that we made our own Pint in a small Bar in the Guinness-Factory. We got a Certificate there too. Yeah, I will place it in this Blog when I have enough time. We´ll see.

Tuesday was my first Workday in Dark Rome (Yes, Rome. NOT Room 😉 ). That´s an organisator for many tours in Rome. They are all very nice people. It is not such a big Company but they are all very kind and helpful. I learned a lot of interesting things there and I like it very much. After my first day all people from the IT went to a pub. We were 6 People there and it was very nice to learn something about them.

In the next days I got a little bit around through the City. That´s very easy because I work in the centre of Dublin, directly in the City.

Yesterday I saw the Beach and the Cliffs of Howth. It´s near Dublin and I went by train with a Colleague from the Callcentre of Dark Rome. She is german too, so the language wasn´t the problem. Well, not completely. Shes from Bavaria so there were some problems of course, but not that much I have with the Irish Guys. 😉

I have to say, after a week here in Ireland I am still not completely in here. There are so many different things, the language is still a problem for me. I can write, I can read and I can talk, but it seems to be completely impossible for me to understand their accent.

What shall I say. I have still 7 weeks to improve my understanding.

See you Guys.